What a fantastic week we have had in Class 5! The children have settled in well to their new routine and responsibility as a Year 5 and I am amazed at how much effort they have put in over the summer holidays with their handwriting, spellings, timestables and writing. They have come back refreshed, with a super attitude to learning and made a brilliant start to the term.

The children have also been great at entering and exiting via the front of the school. All children in Year 5 know they are more than welcome to wait in the courtyard with me at the end of the day until an adult collects them. It is also great to see some of the children walking sensibly around on the path – keep it up!

Homework will start next week and if you have any questions about the new system then please don’t hesitate to ask or get your child to during the day. I am looking forward to seeing some more creative pieces of homework where children can use their learning powers to show their understanding of different topics!

Finally, thank you for all your positive feedback about the new classroom – I love teaching in there and feel the children will benefit from the more ‘grown up’ setting.

Have a lovely weekend and I will see you all on Monday!

Miss Walker

Reminders:

Swimming will start on the 18th September

Home School Contact books will be collected on a monday so please make sure you are reading daily.

What a fantastic week ! We were delighted to have such a lovely audience at the dress rehearsal and hope our visitors enjoyed Olivia. As always the children then raise the level by performing so well in the evening for the next two nights. The children were amazing and thank you.

Our transition day went well yesterday and by the sounds of it so did the current year 6's, who went off to spend the day at their secondary schools. Today in celebration assembly each year 6 child had the opportunity to share experiences and moments with the whole school.

We are busy planning now for the Leavers. If possible could all year 6 children bring in the last minute pieces for leavers boards. These must be completed by Monday as the service is on Tuesday 18th July. Your child may ask you for any old certificates, photos that they have had over the years, to display. It is so lovely to see what the children put on their boards. Lots of happy memories!

I just find it hard to believe that we have only three days left and another year leaves and a new year 6 begins. I am sure the teachers will have to work hard to play against such a super bunch of year 6 rounders players. I do look forward to seeing you on Tuesday for the service and I'm sure the tissues will be needed.

Mrs Stewart

Reminder :

Please do have another look at home for any badges, reading books and reading record books please.

Class 5 have been busy putting their cooking skills to the test. By now most of you may have had the chance to taste our Victoria Sponge, which I have to say looked delicious. Our next project in the kitchen is Lemon Curd, next week. If you have any finished(unwanted) jam jars at home we would love to recycle them, by filling them with lovely lemon curd.

Also as a reminder it is non- uniform day tomorrow for Fair in the Square, which is on Saturday. Non -uniform can be worn in exchange for a filled tombola cup, which a few of you have already kindly brought in. This weeks newsletter also explained that jeans could be worn but we asked them not to be ripped or torn.

First of all I hope everyone had a very happy Easter, a restful break and enjoyed spending time together.

The first week has gone so quickly, but everyone seems to be ready for the busy and fun term that lies ahead. I have been really pleased with the effort that children have put in this week and have seen so many learning powers being used.

The new value for this half term is ’Service’. It was launched on Tuesday and hope you found the leaflet attached to this week’s newsletter interesting. It was lovely seeing the children being awarded the first values badges and who could forget the tidy cup and golden chairs. Quite a packed curriculum leaflet was also sent out. I do hope the section regarding SATs has been useful for year 6 parents.

In English we have focused our attention on grammar, punctuation and spelling within text extracts, reading comprehension and poetry. As you already are aware we are looking at the Victorians in history so what better way than to look at some Victorian poetry. This week we have used images of what it would be like as a Victorian child. In small groups the children were given time to discuss and prepare word banks of relevant vocabulary that could be included when writing our drafts. We also took time to look at the use of figurative language. Within reading comprehension sessions, we have been identifying certain features, such as personification, alliteration, oxymoron’s and hyperboles. Next week we shall be continuing with analysing and writing poetry.

In Maths, year 6 have been working on their reasoning skills with a range of topics. Alongside this continuing to build our speed and efficiency in mental arithmetic. Year 5 have concentrated on working with decimals (multiplication and division), prime numbers, factors and multiples. Next week we shall be recapping on fractions, decimals, percentages and word problems involving measure.

Our felt phone cases are almost complete and I have to say they look amazing. Everyone has really tried to persevere and master a range of sewing techniques. The children are now busy on evaluating their final product.

In History, Mrs Archer started our topic about the Victorians. The children learnt about what it was like for children at work. Looking at photographs and evidence, it was clear that it certainly was not an easy time for children then compared to what it is like today.

We have also managed to look at RE. We took a picture by Giotto di Bondone (1267-1337) and concentrated on discussing our thoughts and ideas of the imagery of Pentacost that we could see. The children were given the opportunity to research and find out their own lines of enquiry about this Christian event; to see if they could apply their learning powers. It is always interesting seeing the number of different ways in which the children present their learning when given the chance to be creative. By the end of the lesson it was clear that they had found out a great deal.

As you will have seen from the diary dates that our sport’s day will be just around the corner. At the field today Mr Jefferies and I were astounded at the progress made, in just one lesson so far, with the standing jump. Every child showed great determination. It was then followed off with a chance to show their skills in a relay race. Looking at the standards, I’m sure it will be a close competition between all teams for this year’s cup.

Homework

I can certainly see that the children took the advice of ensuring that they kept their learning ticking over the Easter holidays, as I have a mountain of marking. I do value the amount that each child has managed to achieve and will therefore be handing out the CPG books for Year 6 and maths work for year 5 on Monday.

We discussed as a class that our learning never stops, so would have plenty activities at home to carry on with. Therefore I would like the children to do a few of the following:

reading (daily )

spellings (these can be completed verbally, things such as prefixes, )

times tables

SAM Learning (Year 6 )

Of course the children can even produce something that has interested them from any of the lessons covered this week.

A lovely way to end another busy week. The school councillors spent the day helping collect and count your kind donations for this years Comic Relief. At break time and after school, red nose biscuits were on sale, which were kindly made by Mrs Harringtion – Smith. For those children keeping their Lenten promises we had fruit to offer. A sea of red filled the hall and finished the day by singing the Red Nose song – “Put a Nose on It. “ Keep an eye out for the final amount raised.

In English we continued to focus our attentions on writing in the narrative style. As the week started we looked at characterisation. There is quite a difference seeing a character but to then bring this character to life in writing can be quite challenging. The tendency of course, is to heavily write on the characters appearance; hair colour, clothing, etc, but as the children become older the expectations increase. With higher expectations also comes more mature vocabulary. Some of our early morning work has focused on this with; anagrams and then using words in sentences with subordinating conjunctions, synonym and antonym compasses then creating sentences with question tags. Parents, who attended parents evening on Thursday, will have seen the increased content requirements from the writing mats that were handed out. Those parents attending appointments on Monday will also receive these support guides. To show how powerful language can be, we compared the book to watching some clips and parts of the ‘Railway Children’ on screen. It was interesting to see that one small snippet of film could be at least two to three pages long and this is without dialogue. Next week we will move to settings, dialogue and writing in different styles such as: letter or diary writing. It is lovely to see a few of the children with their copies of the book and many of the children enjoyed watching the extracts and seeing the historical context of this novel.

In Maths our ‘Problem of the Day’ is proving quite useful. These quick fire scenarios are helping us draw on previous learning. The week started with understanding the relationship and solving problems involving ratio and proportion. This drew on some real life problem solving as we looked at recipes and brought in additional learning linked with measure. We then moved onto constructing triangles using protractors, which children grasped more quickly. During class discussions it appeared that a number of us wished to return to long division. By the end of the week, with Year 5 and Year 6, I would need to type a long list of all the mathematical concepts we were covering in class. Small little workshops with adults were in full swing.

In Science we were looking closely at the digestive system. We were exploring how water and nutrients are transported around this complex part of our bodies and researching how the different organs function. As you may gather there were quite a few questions and some strange facial expressions. When tackling this particular area, we took the time to revisit the different nutrients that we put into our body. As I explained, that as the children are getting older they need to understand how to look after their bodies, in order to remain healthy.

With the remaining time left in the week the children continued to find their Geography topic of the local area extremely interesting. This week a cross curricular theme was further embedded in their learning. Mrs Archer was asking the children to locate features by reading a map and giving the co-ordinates. This is of course a skill which is slowly dying out due to the powers of technology, with Sat Nav’s and Siri.

Some parents may have also seen their child’s sewing skills in action, as their felt phone cases may have been placed in their drawers at parent’s appointments. I have been amazed by the patience and effort that the children have shown over the weeks.

I am sure everyone has enjoyed watching the chick cam. The love of this project never fades even as the children get older. Our preparations for our Easter Service are also underway and we do hope you will be able to join us next week.

Please can I remind the children to bring their correct PE kits to school. I know I asked them to take them home to be washed more regularly but I also explained that they needed to be responsible in bringing them back. The majority have managed but it would be lovely to have them all.

OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL

Firstly I would like to congratulate the Year 5 footballers on their efforts at the tournament on Thursday afternoon. I hear that you all represented the school brilliantly. The detailed match reports from years 4 and 5, at the celebration assembly on Friday, gave us an indication of the effort that our teams give at matches.

As I type this blog I sit wondering how the year 6 children are doing at their football rally. I am sure they are playing just as well and representing our school in a similar fashion. I look forward to hearing about it.

HOMEWORK – Year 5 and 6

Homework was discussed in class and it was lovely to see some children taking responsibility in writing down what they had to do, without being reminded.

Again, this week I set a generic piece for both year groups and then set various tasks from this that the children could choose or work from.

English - Crossword.

Crosswords are a great and fun way to embed vocabulary. Having seen last week’s homework I thought of continuing with this. I would like the children to solve the puzzle (based on adjectives). I have asked if they could take time to create some across and down clues in order to produce a puzzle themselves. The puzzle could be themed on another single word class, or a mixture of word classes. By doing this it will also help the children’s understanding of GPS terminology.

Maths – Mental Arithmetic

As you will know we carry out Turbo tables within school twice a week. This quick fire method of learning has proved beneficial for improving the pace of mental recall of facts. With this in mind I have given the children a similar style but using different maths concepts that they are required to know.

The way that this homework can be carried out varies.

Set a given time of 2 – 3 mins and see how far the children can achieve.

Complete the strip and see how long they take to do it. With the next time they try can the beat their time.

I would suggest that they take breaks in between the completion of these strips.